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A sling is a projectile weapon typically used to throw a blunt projectile such as a
stone. It is also known as the shepherd's
sling.

A sling has a small cradle or pouch in the middle of
two lengths of cord. The sling stone is placed in the
pouch. Both cords are held in the hand, then the sling is swung and
one of the two cords is released. This frees the projectile to fly
on a tangent to the circle made by the pouch's rotation. The sling
derives its effectiveness by essentially extending the length of a
human arm, thus allowing stones to be thrown several times farther
than they could be by hand.

The sling is very inexpensive, and easy to build. It has
historically been used for hunting game and in combat. Today it still
interests sportsmen as a survival tool and as an improvised weapon.
It's also possible to see the sling used in riots around the
world.

The sling
in antiquity

Origins

The sling is an ancient weapon. It is certain that slings were
known to Neolithic
peoples around the Mediterranean, but it seems likely that the
sling is much older. It is quite possible that the sling was
invented during the Upper Paleolithic at a time when new
technologies, such as the atlatl and the bow and arrow, were
emerging. With the exception of Australia, where spear throwing technology such as the woomera predominated, the sling
became common all over the world, although it is not clear whether
this occurred because of cultural
diffusion or independent invention.

Archaeology

Whereas sling-bullets are common finds
in the archaeological record, slings themselves are rare. This is
because a sling's materials are biodegradable and
because slings are low-status weapons, rarely preserved in a
wealthy person’s grave.

The oldest known extant slings were found in the tomb of Tutankhamen who died about 1325 B.C.. A pair of finely
plaited slings were found with other weapons. The sling was
probably intended for the departed pharaoh to use for hunting game.[1]

Written
history

The sling is mentioned by Homer[4] and by
many other Greek authors. The historian of the famous retreat of
the Ten Thousand, 401 BC, relates that
the Greeks suffered severely from the slingers in the army of Artaxerxes II of Persia, while
they themselves had neither cavalry nor slingers, and were unable
to reach the enemy with their arrows and javelins. This deficiency
was later rectified when a company of 200 Rhodians, who understood
the use of leaden sling-bullets, was formed. They were able, says
Xenophon, to project their
missiles twice as far as the Persian slingers,
who used large stones.[5]

Ancient authors seemed to believe, incorrectly, that
sling-bullets could penetrate armour, and that lead projectiles,
heated by their passage through the air, would melt in flight.[6][7] In the
first instance, it seems likely that the authors were indicating
that slings could cause injury through armour by a percussive
effect rather than by penetration. In the latter case we may
imagine that they were impressed by the degree of deformation
suffered by lead sling-bullet after hitting a hard target.

Various ancient peoples enjoyed a reputation for skill with the
sling. Thucydides
mentions the Acarnanians and Livy refers to the inhabitants of three Greek
cities on the northern coast of the Peloponnesus as expert
slingers. Livy also mentions the most famous of ancient skillful
slingers: the people of the Balearic Islands. Of these people Strabo writes: And their
training in the use of slings used to be such, from childhood up,
that they would not so much as give bread to their children unless
they first hit it with the sling.[8]

Recruits are to be taught the art of throwing stones both
with the hand and sling. The inhabitants of the Balearic Islands
are said to have been the inventors of slings, and to have managed
them with surprising dexterity, owing to the manner of bringing up
their children. The children were not allowed to have their food by
their mothers till they had first struck it with their sling.
Soldiers, notwithstanding their defensive armour, are often more
annoyed by the round stones from the sling than by all the arrows
of the enemy. Stones kill without mangling the body, and the
contusion is mortal without loss of blood. It is universally known
the ancients employed slingers in all their engagements. There is
the greater reason for instructing all troops, without exception,
in this exercise, as the sling cannot be reckoned any encumbrance,
and often is of the greatest service, especially when they are
obliged to engage in stony places, to defend a mountain or an
eminence, or to repulse an enemy at the attack of a castle or
city.[9]

Biblical Accounts of
Slings

The sling is mentioned in the Bible, which provides what is believed to be the
oldest textual reference to a sling in the Book of Judges,
20:16. This text was thought to have been written about 1000 BC,
but refers to events several centuries earlier.

The Bible also provides one of the more famous slinger stories,
the battle between David and Goliath from The First Book of
Samuel 17, probably written in the 7th or 6th century BC, describing events
alleged to have occurred around the 10th century BC. In this story, the
shepherd David, unarmoured and equipped only with a sling, defeats
the warrior champion Goliath with a well-aimed shot to the head.
The story serves to emphasise two important aspects of the sling:
it is a low-status weapon, but in the hands of an expert it is not
to be underestimated.

The sling was the weapon of choice for shepherds in the field
due to its usefulness for fending off other animals. This fact is
reflected in The
First Book of Samuel 17:34-36 as David convinces Saul to let him fight Goliath on behalf of
the Israelites. Saul must have been convinced of his great skill
with the sling for he knows if David is defeated so is the
Israelite army. The sling may have been a low-status weapon among
the Philistines but it was a perfect weapon for the Israelites for
it required little resources and was easily produced. Due to this
fact this was a commonly used weapon by the Israelite militia.[10] Use of
the sling is also mentioned in Second Kings 3:25, First Chronicles
12:2, and Second Chronicles 26:14 to further illustrate Israelite
use.

Combat

It is clear that many ancient peoples used the sling in combat
and that organised armies included specialist slingers as well as
equipping regular soldiers with slings as a back up weapon. As a weapon, the sling had several
clear advantages. In general, a sling bullet lobbed in a high
trajectory can achieve ranges approaching 400m[11] —
significantly farther than what could be achieved by most bows,
including the longbow. The
only bows that would have a greater range would be Asiatic composite bow, such
as the Mongol bow,
which had a range of approximately 500 meters. Arrows were
typically loosed along relatively flat trajectories that seldom
managed to send them beyond 250 meters. The current Guinness World Record distance of an object
thrown with a sling stands at 477.0 m, set by David Engvall in 1992
using a metal dart. Larry Bray held the previous world record
(1982), in which a 52 g stone was thrown 437.1 m. Modern
authorities vary widely in their estimates of the effective range
of ancient weapons and of course bows and arrows could also have
been used to produce a long-range arcing trajectory, but ancient
writers repeatedly stress the sling's advantage of range. The sling
was light to carry and cheap to produce; ammunition in the form of
stones was readily available and often to be found near the site of
battle.

Caches of sling ammunition are frequently found at the sites of
Iron Agehill
forts of Europe. 40,000
sling stones were found at Maiden Castle, Dorset. It is
proposed that Iron Age hill forts of Europe were designed to
maximise the effectiveness of defending slingers.

The hilltop location of the wooden forts would have given the
defending slingers the advantage of range over the attackers and
multiple concentric ramparts, each higher than the other, would
allow a large number of men to create a hailstorm of stone.
Consistent with this, it has been noted that, generally, where the
natural slope is steep, the defences are narrow and where the slope
is less steep, the defences are wider.

Construction

A classic sling is braided from non-elastic material. The
classic materials are flax, hemp or wool; those of the Balearic islanders were said to
be made from a type of rush. Flax and hemp resist rotting, but wool
is softer and more comfortable.

Braided cords are used in preference to twisted rope because a
braid resists twisting when stretched. This improves accuracy.

The overall length of a sling could vary significantly and a
slinger may have slings of different lengths, the longer sling
being used when greater range is required. A length of about 61 to
100 cm (2.0 to 3.3 ft) would be typical.

At the centre of the sling, a cradle or pouch is constructed.
This may be formed by making a wide braid from the same material as
the cords or by inserting a piece of a different material such as
leather. The cradle is
typically diamond shaped and, in use, will fold around the
projectile. Some cradles have a hole or slit that allows the
material to wrap around the projectile slightly thereby holding it
more securely; some cradles take the form of a net.

At the end of one cord, a finger-loop is formed. This cord is
called the retention cord. At the end of the other cord it is
common practice to form a knot. This cord is called the release
cord. The release cord will be held between finger and thumb to be
released at just the right moment. The release cord may have a
complex braid to add bulk to the end. This makes the knot easier to
hold and the extra weight allows the loose end of a discharged
sling to be recovered with a flick of the wrist.

Polyester (Dacron
(TM)) is an excellent material for modern slings, because it does
not rot or stretch and is soft and free of splinters.

Modern slings are begun by plaiting the cord for the finger loop
in the center of a double-length set of cords. The cords are then
folded to form the finger-loop. The cords are plaited as a single
cord to the pocket. The pocket is then plaited, most simply as
another pair of cords, or with flat braids or a woven net. The
remainder of the sling is plaited as a single cord, and then
finished with a knot. Braided construction resists stretching, and
therefore produces an accurate sling.

Ammunition

Lead sling bullets with a winged thunderbolt engraved on one side
and the inscription "take that" on the other side. 4th century BC.
From Athens.

The simplest projectile was a stone, preferably well-rounded.
Suitable ammunition is frequently from a river. The size of the
projectiles can vary dramatically in size from pebbles weighing no
more than 50 g (2 oz) to
fist-sized stones weighing 500 g (1 lb) or more.

Projectiles could also be purpose-made from clay; this allowed a very high consistency of size
and shape to aid range and accuracy. Many examples have been found
in the archaeological record.

The best ammunition was cast from lead. Leaden sling-bullets were widely used in the
Greek and Roman world. For a given mass, lead, being very dense,
offers the minimum size and therefore minimum air resistance. In
addition, leaden sling-bullets are small and difficult to see in
flight.

In some cases, the lead would be cast in a simple open mould
made by pushing a finger or thumb into sand and pouring molten
metal into the hole. However, sling-bullets were more frequently
cast in two part moulds. Such sling-bullets come in a number of
shapes including an ellipsoidal form closely resembling an acorn
- this could be the origin of the Latin word for a leaden
sling-bullet: glandes plumbeae (literally leaden acorns)
or simply glandes (meaning acorns, singular
glans).

Other shapes include spherical and, by far the most common, the
biconical, which resembles the shape of the shell of an almond nut or a flattened American
football.

The ancients do not seem to have taken advantage of the
manufacturing process to produce consistent results; leaden
sling-bullets vary significantly. The reason why the almond shape
was favoured is not clear: it is possible that there is some
aerodynamic advantage, but it seems equally likely that there is
some more prosaic reason such as the shape being easy to extract
from a mould or that it will rest in a sling cradle with little
danger of rolling out.

Almond shaped leaden sling-bullets were typically about
35 mm (1 3/8 in) long and about 20 mm (3/4 in) wide
weighing approximately 28 g (0.99 oz). Very often,
symbols or writings were moulded into lead sling-bullets. Many
examples have been found including a collection of about 80
sling-bullets from the siege of Perusia in Etruria from 41 BC, to be found in the museum
of modern Perugia. Examples
of symbols include a stylised lightning bolt, a snake, and a
scorpion - reminders of how a sling might strike without warning.
Writing might include the name of the owning military unit or
commander or might be more imaginative: "Take this," "Ouch," and
even "For Pompey's backside"
added insult to injury, whereas dexa (catch!) is just
sarcastic.

Julius Caesar
writes about clay shot being heated before slinging, so that it
might set light to thatch.

The
sling in medieval period

Europe

By the Middle Ages the shepherd's sling was largely militarily
extinct outside the Iberian
peninsula, where the Spanish and Portuguese infantry favoured
it against light and agile Moorish troops; a sling projectile,
while dangerous even against an armoured opponent, would be lethal
against a light and unarmoured foe. The staff sling (see below)
continued to be used in sieges and the sling was used as a part of
large siege engines.

The sling continued in use for the hunting of game.

The
Americas

In the ancient Andean civilizations such as Inca Empire slings were
made from Llama wool. These slings typically have a cradle that is
long and thin and features a relatively long slit. Andean slings
were constructed from contrasting colours of wool; complex braids
and fine workmanship result in beautiful patterns. Ceremonial
slings were also made; these were large, non-functional and
generally lacked a slit. To this day, ceremonial slings are used in
parts of the Andes as accessories in dances and in mock battles.
They are also used by llama herders; the animals will move away
from the thump of a stone. The stones are not slung to hit the
animals, but to persuade them to move in the desired direction.

The sling was used for hunting and warfare. One notable use was
in Incan resistance against the conquistadors. These slings were
apparently very powerful; in 1491: New Revelations of
the Americas Before Columbus, historian Charles C. Mann
quoted a conquistador, who said that an Incan sling "could break a
sword in two pieces" and "kill a horse".[13] Some
slings could hurl massive stones and its span could be as much as
86 inches and could weigh an impressive 14.4 ounces.[14]

Variants

Staff
sling

Medieval staff slingers (stern castle)

The staff sling, also known as the
stave sling, fustibalus (Latin), fustibale (French),
consists of a staff (a length of wood) with a short sling at one end. One cord of
the sling is firmly attached to the stave and the other end has a
loop that can slide off and release the projectile. Staff slings
are extremely powerful because the stave can be made as long as two
meters, creating a powerful lever. Ancient art shows slingers holding staff
slings by one end, with the pocket behind them, and using both
hands to throw the staves forward over their heads.

The staff sling has a similar range to the shepherd's sling, and
can be as accurate in practiced hands. It is generally suited for
heavier missiles and siege situations as staff slings can achieve
very steep trajectories for slinging over obstacles such as castle
walls. The staff itself can become a close combat weapon in a
melee. The staff sling can throw heavy projectiles a much greater
distance and at a higher arc than a hand sling. Staff slings were
in use well into the Age of Gunpowder, as grenade launchers; and
were used in ship-to-ship combat to throw incendiaries as well.

The mechanism of action of the staff sling is the same as that
of the launching arm of several pre-gunpowder siege engines, such
as the trebuchet. A
trebuchet is essentially a large staff sling powered by a falling
weight, rather than by direct muscle power.

Kestros

The kestros (also known
as the kestrosphendone, cestrus
or cestrosphendone) is an intriguing sling weapon
mentioned by Livy and Polybius. It seems to have been a heavy dart flung from a
leather sling. It was invented in 168 BC and was employed by some of the Macedonian
troops of King Perseus in Third Macedonian
war.

Catapults

The trebuchet is a
gravity powered siege engine which uses the energy stored in a
raised weight to rotate what was, again, a staff sling. It was
designed so that, when the throwing arm of the trebuchet had swung
forward sufficiently, one end of the sling would automatically
become detached and release the projectile. Some trebuchets were
small and operated by a very small crew; however, unlike the onager, it was possible to build
the trebuchet on a gigantic scale: such giants could hurl enormous
rocks at huge ranges. Trebuchets are, in essence, mechanised
slings.

The sling is of interest to athletes interested in, for example,
breaking distance records. Traditional slinging is still practiced
as it always has been in the balearic islands. And competitions and
leagues are common. In the rest of the world the sling is primarily
a hobby weapon and a growing number of people make and practice
with them. In recent years 'slingfests' have been held in Wyoming,
USA in September 2007 and in Staffordshire, England in June
2008.

According to the Guinness
Book of World Records, the current record for the greatest
distance achieved in hurling an object from a sling is:
477.10 m (1,565.3 ft) 4 in), using a 127 cm
(50 in) long sling and a 62 g (2.2 oz) dart. This
was achieved by David Engvall at Baldwin Lake, California, USA on
13 September 1992. Those of a more traditional bent may prefer the
Guinness record for slinging a stone: 437.10 m
(1,434.1 ft) 2 in), using a 129.5 cm (51.0 in) long
sling and a 52 g (1.8 oz) ovoid stone, set by Larry Bray
in Loa, Utah, USA on 21 August 1981.

The principles of the sling may find use on a larger scale in
the future; proposals exist for tether propulsion of spacecraft,
which functionally is an oversized sling to propel a spaceship.

Sling
methods

A Tibetan girl slings a small rock towards a herd of goats.

A skillful throw requires just one rapid rotation. Some slingers
will rotate the sling slowly once or twice to seat the projectile
in the cradle.

One makes an overhand throw, using the sling to extend one's
arm. The motion is similar to bowling a cricket ball. This is
relatively accurate, instinctive and quite powerful. One faces 60
degrees away from the target, with one's weak hand closest to the
target. The coordinated motion is to move every part of the body,
legs, waist, shoulders, arms, elbows and wrist in the direction of
the target in order to add as much speed as possible to the stone.
One releases the projectile near the top of the swing, where the
projectile will proceed roughly parallel to the surface of the
earth.

Another method of release said to be favoured by slingers firing
into grouped or massed targets is an underhand throw. The motion is
similar to that of throwing a softball. The trajectory arc is
relatively high. The thrower stands 60 degrees away from the
target, and takes one step forward from the trailing foot, letting
the sling swing forward. Range is said to be increased with this
method, sacrificing accuracy. Several historians have conjectured
that this was the most commonly used method in ancient warfare due
to its practicality.

There are also sideways releases, in which the swing goes
around. These throws make it very easy to miss the target by
releasing the projectile at a slightly wrong time. Other slinging
methods can be seen, but many authorities deprecate them.

The clumsiest part of using a shepherd's sling is to regain
control of the release cord. Conventionally, the loop of the
retention cord is placed around a finger of the strong hand.
Several projectiles may be held in the weak hand. After the
release, an expert will continue the motion. The cradle will catch
around a stone held out with the weak hand, so that the end of the
release cord swings back to the strong hand retaining the loop.
Just after the knot begins to swing, slightly before the knot
reaches the strong hand, one drops or throws the projectile toward
the ground with the weak hand, starting into the next release. Some
people braid the end of the release cord around a weight to help
perform this maneuver. With this method, a skillful user can throw
an aimed stone every few seconds in a cyclic coordinated movement,
until the weak hand is empty.

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A sling is a type of weapon which involves swinging a rock round to gain speed before throwing it. The sling is an ancient weapon which was used in the Roman Empire.

The most famous user of sling was David, the future king of Israel, who killed Goliath by slinging a stone on his forehead.

Modern tests have shown that the story of David killing Goliath with a sling is fully credible. A skillful slinger can hit a target 10*10 cm at 20 metres distance. A sling has operational range for some 200 metres.